As for the Nazi past, she said, “the uniqueness, the singularity of German guilt has stood much too often in the forefront, and distorted the view that there are also enough positive aspects to our history.”

In a shabby hall on the outskirts of Mannheim, a city of 300,000 about 60 miles south of Frankfurt, Ms. Petry got a sympathetic hearing from some 250 listeners.

“Germany is crazy,” said Katja Kornmacher, 46, who said she works in a publishing house and holds two university degrees. “We have the feeling that we can’t say anything” against the leftist view in Germany. “It starts in school, where we are told what is correct. And those who follow this line land better in life... The line is: ‘Right is bad, left is good.’ And then the leftists are outside shouting against this democratic event.”

33 comments:

“We have the feeling that we can’t say anything” against the leftist view in Germany. “It starts in school, where we are told what is correct. And those who follow this line land better in life... The line is: ‘Right is bad, left is good.’ And then the leftists are outside shouting against this democratic event.”

The Germans are so German sometimes. When they choose a direction they tend to go to an extreme. Whether it's left or right, they've always been a people of extremes. Having a lot of German blood in me I can relate.

The liberal orthodoxy would crucify her if they could. Except that the refugee crises caused by Obama, Merkel et al progressive wars and social justice disasters has awakened Europeans from their socialist-induced slumber.

I'd love to find the source of the quote to the effect that the German people are individually brilliant but collectively moronic. We see this in Nazism, followed by an even more evil and destructive philosophy, Willkommenskulturism.

Germany, like most of Europe is between a rock and a hard place as regards immigration. The domestic birth rates cannot support the social welfare expenditures promised going forward; so, they need bodies from somewhare to pay into the system to keep it solvent. Unfortunately, the folks who they're bringing in to make the payments are seriously impacting German culture. This is probably not going to end well.

I understand that one can no longer have a bratwurst and a beer (bier) in public in Germany. A regulation like that in Madison would bring out howling mobs with pitchforks and torches. The Germans seem more phlegmatic about giving up brats and letting their Mädchen be molested in city squares. Nevertheless I think the CDU's days as a viable party are numbered.

"with up to one-fifth of the vote on Sunday". I bet1) that they get more than that, more than any pollsters imagined, because people support them who won't say so. And2) that the only way that candidate is "right-wing" (repeated numerous times in the article) is that she is against uncontrolled immigration. She probably doesn't have a single other issue that we would recognize as "right-wing" in the United States. Merkel herself is in many ways fiscally conservative. And none of them is going to oppose socialized medicine...

Well, I don't agree, and neither do the accepted definitions. Nazism was both anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist. Nazism's antipathy toward capitalism was largely directed at the Jews, who he believed controlled the banks, much as the Left in the US does today. His antipathy toward Marxism was partly grounded in it's assault on the Middle Class, religion and private property, but also due to the Marxism's Jewish roots. Mostly, Hitler believed in a state directed economy in the interests of the "volk," much as the Left does today. Corporatism probably comes closest to describing Nazism. Every time I hear The Bern talk about breaking up the banks, cutting the number of deoderants and cancelling international trade agreements I hear a slight echo from 1930's Germany. Of course, that's just me.

But ... I thought the Nazis were supposed to be leftists (as in National Socialists).

The Media almost universally fail to present meaningful, informative political commentary by conflating or misidentifying political groupings.

Adjectives such as "Liberal" and "Conservative" are useless and ill-informing unless additionally clarified by "Social" and "Fiscal." The Nolan Chart may not be the ultimate best political descriptor, but it is a whale of a way ahead of currently prevalent Media blathering.

Communists and National Socialists alike are Statists, believing in Government control of the economy. National Socialists (fascists) believe in private ownership of property; Communists do not. Both believe the *use* of property should be controlled by Government.

The Media delight in explaining socially liberal standards of "Progressives" but fail to warn that Progressives will use armed Government intervention contravene First Amendment rights of citizens with different social standards.

But then perhaps the Media do not "fail" in this regard. To "fail" implies not achieving a desired objective. Absent a desired objective to present meaningful, informative political commentary, there can be no "failure" to do so.

The Germans are a mixture of diverse peoples who speak dialects of the same language.Some no longer speak German. The Soviets moved everyone's borders 200 km. to the west after WWII, so East Germans are now Poles, and East-Prussians are Russians.

The "German guilt" thing is overdone. If Nazism could happen Germany, it could happen anywhere, and in fact did during (and also somewhat before) WWII. Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian, and the worst torture squad in Norway during the war was a quisling gang. They made even the Gestapo gag.

I am not sure how much of a political theorist Hitler was. His main idea seems to have been that Germany lost WWI due to treachery and he was going to rectify that whatever it took. Nazism makes sense as a command economy to prepare the country for war. According to what I have read, Hjalmar Schacht told Hitler he could keep the flim-flam game going until 1940-41, but then it would crash. So Hitler started it in 1939.

The simplistic discovery of Socialist in the Nazi Party name really has nothing to do with Hitler's Third Reich being communist or leftest. It was only a disguise in the early Weimar Republic elections to support candidates until they beat out the Communists and took over Germany.

Immediately, Regional SS strongmen murdering whomever the Nordic Occultist Fuhrer decide he wanted killed ruled everything. For 6 years of rearmament there was some loot directed to benefit the working people in the armament factories, like a socialist regime claims it will do, but only as an added carrot to the murder stick needed until a full transition into a War of Conquest of the World could be started.

Just a day or so ago, Althouse posted a list of YikYaks which included a German student jokingly saying that Germany once had an idea, but nobody much liked it.

I for one appreciate the long running joke across multiple posts that Althouse is perpetrating here.

In a few days, I expect one about a Muslim, a German and a European Jew, wherein the Jew ends up being blamed for deserving the Holocaust and the Germans are blamed for not killing all the Jews, by the Muslim. It is to laff, such humor!

Back in the day, say from 1800-1995, it was considered, at least most of the time, a good thing, in liberal circles, for empires to break up. Hence Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Cuba, etc. breaking away from Spain, or Algeria from France, or Lithuania from Russia, etc. was seen a good thing.

In contrast, Savoy conquering and swallowing up Sicily, Naples, and the Papal States was also, somehow, a good thing.

Today, the EU breaking up is seen as a bad thing.

I suggest that the attitude towards any of these mergers and breakups is either entirely irrational and driven by fashion, or merely a matter of partisan and factional interest.